The Virtue of Being Forgotten

In this age of information and surveillance, privacy has become a necessary watchword—a countermeasure to the constant documentation of what we say, do, buy, and consume. Though the implications of the term have changed with the rise of the internet and other digital technologies, people have long been wary of intrusion into their personal life. In his 1975 book, Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault wrote about the rise of recordkeeping in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, namely the government practice of maintaining detailed legal accounts of surveillance and detention. He argued that the state “made of this description a means of control and a method of domination.”

Lowry Pressly’s new book, The Right to Oblivion, might be read as a useful update to Foucault, in an era when this sort of domination has become so regular and thoroughgoing that many people might not even recognize it as such. As Pressly writes, “Employers track their employees’ keystrokes and Internet usage. Teachers monitor their students’ eye movements.” These actions reflect “a lack of trust,” as Pressly argues, and produce a vicious cycle: “Surveillance creates suspicion and therefore the urge to surveil.” Pressly’s book is a probing critique of a modern public sphere that overwhelms the private realm, but it goes further than that. He argues for privacy, or what he more accurately terms “oblivion,” as not just freedom from surveillance but a positive, albeit essentially unknowable value—a place where true human depth and personality reside.